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When we see news reports on urban schools, usually we see incidents of hazing, reports on dropouts, violence at school, gang related incidents, or the problem of overcrowding. Rarely do we ever hear about city schools with accolades and positive success rates. It was unheard of to hear of a school graduating 100 percent of its class.

In Camden, New Jersey, MetEast High has broken the stereotype, successfully graduating its entire senior class.

The school is one that sports only 100 students in its class, and critics may claim that is simply the reason why the students have succeeded. Unfortunately, that doesn’t take into consideration the facts of the area where the school sits, as well as how the students interact with kids from all the other public schools around, associate with the same friends (some of which are gang members) and deal with all of the same problems such as teen pregnancy and becoming homeless (as students did become), and still graduated school and landed themselves in college.

Critics also need to look at the statistics of the area before brushing off the accomplishment as a fluke. Taking a look at other high schools in Camden, Camden High has a dropout rate of 1 in 7. Woodrow Wilson High is almost 1 in 11. Those rates may be conservative as well, which only makes the accomplishment of MetEast more praiseworthy.

The school itself revolves around student interaction with peers, projects, presentations and preparing for the world beyond high school. The ‘advisers,’ not teachers, are with the kids for all the years they attend and are there to reinforce learning, not indoctrinate them with the ideology most liberal public school teachers attempt to implant in impressionable minds.

This just shows America’s uneducated youth is not a problem caused by the students: its a problem of the teaching practices of those in charge of them.